History of the Commune of 1871

by Lissagaray

The Commission of Pardons awaited, chassepot in hand, the prey given up to them by the courts-martial. On the 22d of February, 1872, it shot three of the so-called murderers of Clément-Thomas and Lecomte, even those whose innocence had most clearly come out in the trial—Herpin-Lacroix, Lagrange, and Verdagnier. Upright at the stake of the 28th November, they cried "Vive la Commune!" and died, their faces radiant. On the 19th March Préau de Védel was executed. On the 30th April it was Genton's turn. The wounds which he had received in May had reopened, and he dragged himself to the Butte on his crutches. Arrived at the stake, he threw them from him, cried "Vive la Commune!" and fell under the fire. On the 25th May the three stakes were again occupied by Sérizier, Bouin, and Boudin, the latter condemned as chief of the platoon which in front of the Tuileries had executed a Versaillese who attempted to prevent the erection of the barricades of the Rue Richelieu. They said to the soldiers of the platoon, "We are children of the people, and you are too. We shall show you that the children of Paris know how to die." And they, also, fell, crying "Vive la Commune!"

These men who went to the grave so courageously, who with a gesture defied the musket, who, dying, cried that their cause died not, these ringing voices, these steadfast looks, disconcerted the soldiers profoundly. The muskets trembled, and almost within point-blank range they rarely killed at the first discharge. So at the next execution, the 6th July, the Commander Colin, who presided at these fusillades, ordered the eyes of the victims bandaged. There were two of them—Baudoin, accused of setting fire to the St. Eloi Church, and of killing an individual who had fired at the Federals; and Rouilhac, an insurgent who had shot at a bourgeois who was potting Federals. Both pushed back the sergeants who came to blindfold them. Colin gave the order to tie them to the stake. Three times Baudoin tore asunder the cords; Rouilhac struggled desperately. The priest who came to assist the soldiers received some blows in the chest. At last, overwhelmed, they cried, "We die for the good cause." They were mangled by the balls. After the march past, an officer of a psychological turn of mind, moving with the tip of his boot the brains that trickled down, remarked to a colleague, "It is with this that they thought."

In June, 1872, all the celebrated cases being disposed of, military justice avenged the death of a Federal, Captain Beaufort. There is but one explanation for this strange fact, which is that Beaufort belonged to the Versaillese. We have received important evidence on this head.[252] At all events, if Delescluze or Varlin had been shot by the Federals, Versailles would not have avenged their death.

Three of those accused out of four were present, Deschamps, Denivelle, and Madame Lachaise, the celebrated cantinière of the 66th. She had followed Beaufort before the council held at the Boulevard Voltaire, and, having heard explanations, had done her best to protect him. The indictment none the less made of her the principal instigator of his death. On the written evidence of a witness who was not to be found, and who had never been confronted with her, the commissary accused Madame Lachaise of having profaned Beaufort's corpse. At this abominable accusation this noble woman burst into tears. She, as well as Denivelle and Deschamps, were condemned to death.

The obscene imagination of soldiers with Algerian habits taxed itself to pollute the accused. Colonel Dulac, judging an intimate friend of Rigault's, pretended that their friendship had been of an infamous character. Despite the indignant protests of the prisoner, the wretched officer persisted.

The bourgeois press, far from stigmatising, applauded. Without truce, without lassitude, since the opening of the courts-martial it accompanied all the trials with the same chorus of imprecations and the same slanders. Some persons having protested against these executions so long after the battle, Francisque Sarcey wrote, "The axe ought to be riveted to the hand of the executioner."

Till then the Commission of Pardons had only killed three at a time. On the 24th of July it slaughtered four—François, the director of La Roquette, Aubry, Dalivoust, and De St. Omer, condemned for the affair of the Rue Haxo. De St. Omer was more than suspected, and in the prison his comrades kept aloof from him. Before the muskets they cried "Vive la Commune!" He answered, "Down with it!"

On the 18th September, Lolive (accused of having participated in the execution of the Archbishop), Denivelle, and Deschamps were executed. These last cried, "Long live the Universal and Social Republic! Down with the cowards!" On the 22nd January, 1873, nineteen months after the battle in the streets, the Commission of Pardons tied three more victims to its stakes—Philippe, member of the Council of the Commune, guilty of having energetically defended Bercy; Benot, who set fire to the Tuileries; and Decamps, condemned for the conflagration of the Rue de Lille, although they had not been able to bring forward any evidence whatever against him. "I die innocent," cried he. "Down with Thiers!" Philippe and Benot: "Long live the Social Republic! Vive la Commune!" They fell, not having belied the courage of the soldiers of the Revolution of the 18th March.

This was the last execution at Satory. The blood of twenty-five victims had reddened the stakes of the Commission of Pardons. In 1875 it had a young soldier shot at Vincennes, accused of the death of the detective Vizentini, thrown into the Seine by hundreds of hands at the manifestation of the Bastille.[253]

The movements of the provinces were judged by courts-martial or assize courts, according to the department being or not being in a state of siege. Everywhere the issue of the Parisian struggle had been waited for. Immediately after the defeat of Paris the reaction ran riot. Espivent's courts-martial initiated these trials. He had his Gaveau in Commander Villeneuve, one of the bombarders of the 4th April, his Merlin, and his Boisdenemetz in the colonels Thomassin and Douat. On the 12th June Gaston Crémieux, Etienne, Pélissier, Roux, Bouchet, and all those who could be connected with the movement of the 23rd March appeared before the soldiers. The pretentious blockheadedness of Villeneuve served as type of the military prosecutor's addresses with which France was inundated. Crémieux, Etienne, Pélissier, and Roux were condemned to death. This was not enough for the jesuitical bourgeois reaction. Espivent had declared through the Court of Cassation that the department of the Bouches-du-Rhône was in a state of siege since the 9th August, 1870, in virtue of a decree by the Empress, which had neither been published in the bulletin of laws, nor been sanctioned by the Senate, nor even promulgated. Provided with this arm, he persecuted all marked out by the hand of the Congregation. The municipal councillor, David Bosc, ex-delegate to the Commission, a millionaire shipowner, accused of having stolen a silver watch from a police agent, was only acquitted by a small majority of voices. The next day the colonel-president was replaced by the lieutenant-colonel of the 4th Chasseurs, Donnat, half-mad with absinthe-drinking. A workingman, aged seventy-five, was condemned to ten years' hard labour and twenty years' deprivation of civil and political rights for having on the 4th September arrested for half an hour a police agent who had sent him to Cayenne in 1852. A crazy old woman, purveyor of the Jesuits, arrested for a few moments on the 4th September, accused the former commander of the Civil Guard of her arrest. Her accusation was contradicted by herself and quite overthrown by alibis and numberless proofs. The ex-commander was condemned to five years' of prison and ten years' privation of civil rights. One of the soldier-judges, coming out after committing this crime, said, "One must have very profound political convictions to condemn in similar affairs." With these cynical collaborators Espivent could satisfy all his hatred. He asked the courts of Versailles to deliver up to him the member of the Council of the Commune, Amourox, delegate for a time at Marseilles. "I am prosecuting him for tampering with soldiers," wrote Espivent, "a crime punished by death; and I am persuaded that this punishment will be applied to him."